


Special

by EllieCarina



Category: Limitless (TV)
Genre: Baby, Baby Safety Scare, Brebecca, Brian x Rebecca, Child, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, NZT, Rebecca x Brian, Slightly Insane Eddie, Worried Becca, Worried Brian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-03 13:26:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5292719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieCarina/pseuds/EllieCarina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliza Helen Finch was five minutes and thirty-two seconds old when she first heard the sound of a coffee cup shattering on a previously sterile PVC floor. She would later be able to recall this moment as well as any moment in her life, going back almost to her conception.<br/>“Rebecca,” it was not the first time she had heard her father’s voice and it wasn’t the first time that he’d sounded worried - but it was the first time it sounded absolutely terrified, “look at her eyes.” </p><p>****<br/>Brian and Rebecca have their first child and they worry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Special

**Author's Note:**

> I've very recently gotten (knees deep) into Limitless and I absolutely love it already and Brian x Rebecca is already very far up my OTP list. I hope the series sticks and we get a nice, slow-but-not-too-slow-burning Fringe-Polivia-like romance for them. Until then, I'll write it myself..so here we go. My first Brebecca fi. I hope there will be more and the fandom grows some.
> 
> If you stumbled here by accident, please watch the show, you won't regret it :)  
> If you're here for the Brebecca and leave satisfied, do also leave some kudos or a comment at the bottom, it is much appreciated :)
> 
> Also..if you are open to flailing about Brebecca, shoot me an ask over at jackpot girl{.}tumblr{.}com :)

Eliza Helen Finch was five minutes and thirty-two seconds old when she first heard the sound of a coffee cup shattering on a previously sterile PVC floor. She would later be able to recall this moment as well as any moment in her life, going back almost to her conception.  
“Rebecca,” it was not the first time she had heard her father’s voice and it wasn’t the first time that he’d sounded worried - but it was the first time it sounded absolutely terrified, “look at her eyes.”

Brian thought he was mistaken, surely, it could not be. Even with NZT cursing through his system, which made him hyper alert and able to process new information instantly, what he saw flicker in his baby daughters eyes was impossible. Or was it? He pried his eyes away from Eliza to find Rebecca, looking down horrified at her baby, clutching the little bundle that she was tighter. 

Rebecca knew this glimmer inside out. Since the first time she had seen someone’s eyes - her father’s eyes - gleam like that, her whole life had changed. She knew what it meant, she was used to loving eyes that sometimes shined this way, she knew how Brian was on NZT, knew what he could do. But she also knew why he could do it. Because President Morra had bought his life with the antidote to the fatal side affects using NZT had. Eliza was not on NZT. Eliza was just minutes old, she had just come back from getting cleaned up - Rebecca herself was still caked in dried sweat and blood from giving birth to her.

“Brian, did they give her anything when they weighed and measured her?” Rebecca’s voice was brittle and beneath superficial calm, Brian could tell by the very cadence that she on the brink of a a panic attack. Still, she held on to her daughter like she’d never been anything other than a Mom, steady and tight. She wanted to protect the baby and keep any stress away from her. Eliza would later be able to recall this moment being pressed to her mother’s chest and describe a hummingbird heartbeat, running away and galloping in fear.

“No, no one could have,” Brian said and got close to the two of them, focusing again on the child and her gleaming eyes, “I was watching her the whole time. And it makes no sense..who would do that? Who would gave a baby NZT?”

“I don’t know,” Rebecca said, “but that’s it, that’s the drug, in her eyes. Brian, what about the side effects? What if…she’s just a baby, she can’t handle those side effects.”  
Rebecca’s eyes swam with tears as Brian’s rational, NZT-fueled second, better-Brian stepped in and kept his emotional and rightfully panicked side in check and in the back of his mind. This was not the time for drawing blind and uninformed conclusions. Now, having perfect recall, he knew that he was right, none of the doctors of nurses had given his baby anything. He had been watching the whole five minutes she was alive and never in that time had anybody even touched her mouth. So someone must’ve given Rebecca NZT before she gave birth and it must’ve gotten into Eliza’s blood stream? But then again Rebecca’s eyes were normal and she would have known if she had been on NZT. She hadn’t. But then how?

“Brian,” she was barely hanging on, he could hear it. She was willing him to put her mind at ease and he tried but he couldn’t, not yet.  
“I’m thinking,” he said and squeezed her arm gently, “I need to make a phone call. Don’t let anybody touch our baby.” With that he pressed a firm, reassuring kiss on his girlfriend’s glaring hot head, smelling like jasmine shampoo, exhaustion and naked terror, and went into the hospital corridor. He ran from there. Not so fast that it would have drawn attention, but fast enough to reach the smoker’s terrace three floors above two and a half minutes later. 

In Brian’s phone there was a number that he never called. It was saved under the name of a Dry Cleaning Service that went to a four-minute loop of “The number you have called is not in service”, which were the longest four minutes of his life. When it finally, finally, ended, a machine voice told him to input “the code” and he brought a sixteen-digit-password to recollection and punched it into his phone like a maniac. What followed was more waiting until -  
“State your name, please,” a female voice said evenly.  
“It’s Brian Finch, I need to talk to him,” he said.  
“Are you calling from a secure line?”  
“No,” Brian said and brought his hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose, trying to keep his breathing in check and his heart from thumping his throat dry. He did not have time for this, “And I can’t get on a secure line right now, it’s urgent. I need to speak with him.”  
“I’m afraid he is in a very important meeting at the moment,” the voice said.  
“No,” Brian grew frustrated, “I need to talk to him immediately, get him on the phone right this second or I will call the FBI the moment I hang up and turn myself over and him in.”  
“Of course,” the lady said, just as calm as before, “let me see what I can do.”

There was a click on the line and then static noise and more minutes ticked idly by. Brian had started hitting his palm against his temple and was groaning when he heard rustling on the other line.  
“Brian,” Eddie Morra sounded just as collected, slightly amused and un-presidential as ever, “the Secretary of Defence isn’t the fondest of postponed meetings so I hope there’s a very good reason for this call.”  
“I have a daughter,” Brian said, determining this to be the best route of conversation.  
“Well, congratulations,” Morra said, “I didn’t know Rebecca was that far along yet.”  
“She wasn’t, Eliza was half a month early,” Brian replied quickly, “thats not the point, the point is that her eyes are shining. I don’t know how because I can swear on my life that nobody could have given her anything, but my daughter is on NZT and I’m scared shitless.”  
Morra said nothing. For an unnervingly long time. Brian got nervous. And angry.  
“Fuck, if you had anything to do with this, I swear to God I will kill you!”  
“No, Brian,” Morra hurried to say, “I didn’t…I…don’t think anybody did this to her. Come on, think about it - you must have thought about it already. You just don’t believe it’s plausible but it’s the only thing that makes sense. Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter-“  
“-how improbable, must be the truth,” Brian finished for him, “But how? If she’s born with it…how does that work?”

“I don’t know,” Morra admitted, “We haven’t exactly covered procreational matters and heredity transmission in our lab tests, I for one don’t have children and no one else on NZT lived long enough to have them yet so there was no way of knowing or testing before. Still, the drug changes and surely in some ways permanently changed the way our brains work, it reprogrammed our whole system, Brian. And the shots, they make you immune for a time, they modify our bodies. And if the combination of those two things translated into your genes, if it - mutated them, there is a chance that your daughter is not on anything. There’s a chance that she is able to access her 100% brain capacity from birth; that it’s the way she is built.”  
“But what if she isn’t?” Brain felt that this would be too easy, too good to be true because it would mean she was safe. “What if I, I don’t know, poisoned her somehow?”  
“I wouldn’t know,” Morra said, “but I don’t think she would have made it past her first week inside her mother if that were true. Listen, I need to get back to the office right now but I am sending someone over to collect a blood sample and I will have them work on it day and night. I’m truly sorry, Brian. Give Rebecca my love.”  
“But -,” and with that the line was dead.

When Brian re-entered the delivery room, he found it empty and instantly panicked. He twirled around, back into the corridor and yelled at the first nurse he knew from sight. She told him quickly, and visibly shaken by his outburst, that Rebecca and Eliza had been taken back to their room on the paediatric floor. Brian felt stupid, apologised profusely and took the stairs because he could not stand the thought of waiting for an elevator.

Rebecca sat rigidly in her bed, unwilling to put Eliza in the crib the nurse had set up beside her bed, even though her arms were cramping and she felt so on edge that she was sure she would explode any second. But then again, maybe it was a good thing she was holding her baby after all. Eliza was likely the only thing keeping Rebecca from flailing and falling apart with worry. She would not and could not leave her out of sight. When the nurse tried to take Eliza from her, all innocently and truly just wanting to help, Rebecca had snapped and sent her out. Since then, she had stared at the child so intendedly, the rest of her vision was starting to blur. She was waiting for some kind of sign, some change in her breathing or face but the baby was just looking up at her, calmly and with a sort-of puzzled look. Rebecca knew that her daughter could not have a concept of her mother’s state of mind or the situation at all, but her eyes were shiny and awake and somehow so present, it felt like she did, in fact, understand everything. 

When Brian burst in the door, Rebecca jumped, only holding her daughter tighter.  
“Geez, Brian,” she exhaled.  
“Is she okay?” Brian hurried back to her side, leaning over her to catch a glimpse at the baby.  
“She’s fine,” Rebecca said, “so far. Who did you call?”  
“Who do you think?”  
“Does he know what’s wrong with her, does he know if she’ll be alright? Did he give her NZT?” Rebecca sat up straighter, her bones cracking with the sudden movement.  
“He says he has nothing to do with it and I believe him,” Brian said, “he thinks that she isn’t really on NZT. He thinks that she…is NZT so to speak. That my genes have mutated from the drug and the antidote into her, having NZT-like capabilities by DNA-make up.”  
Rebecca was rendered speechless. Was that possible? She prayed that it was, because it would mean that her baby was going to be alright. Still, Brian did not seem to believe this fully. She looked up at him, her face wrinkled into a question mark.  
“I don’t know, Becca,” Brian sighed, his face split by concern, “I really don’t know. Morra said he will send someone over to collect a blood sample and they’ll run some tests.”  
“Okay,” Rebecca said and pulled all her strength together to muster a smile, “Let’s not tell anybody she’s born until that someone was here.”

Brian nodded and climbed into the bed next to her. His world zeroed in on his daughter as he wrapped an arm around Rebecca and she settled in against his chest. Eliza looked at him now, quizzically, as if she was trying to piece together the commotion and her eyes were shimmery like starlight. She looked so intelligent already and he wondered if it was all really true. And then she smiled up at him and he fell apart. This was his daughter and everything else suddenly went quiet and the world went away to leave just Rebecca and this magnificent being they had created. He could not fathom it. How perfect she was and how much he loved her. He pulled Rebecca closer to his side.  
“Look at her,” he whispered, in awe, like a man seeing the sun for the first time, “we made that.”  
He felt Becca nod against his chin. “Please let her be fine,” she muttered faintly.

At three in the morning, Brian’s phone buzzed him out of sleep and he sat up as if hit by a bolt of lightening. He found Rebecca deep in dreams beside him in the hospital bed and Eliza breathing evenly, and soundly asleep in her crib just an arms length away. He picked up the phone. The number was blocked.  
“Brian Finch?” Again, a woman was speaking, but a different one than earlier.  
“Yes.”  
“What I can tell from the preliminary test results, there is no trace of NZT in your daughter’s blood. There is no sign of antibodies against it either. Still, generally speaking, her blood work shows that she is perfectly healthy and normal. We are sequencing her DNA right now but that will take another hour. I will call you as soon as I know more.”

An hour later - Brain had not gone back to sleep and spent the time watching Rebecca and Eliza - the woman called again.  
“Sir, I have a call for you on the other line,” the woman said and it clicked and then Brian was talking to the President of the United States for the second time in 12 hours.  
“Brian, everyone is going crazy in the lab,” Morra said as a way of greeting and Brian sat up straighter.  
“What’s going on?” He was on high alert and his heart started drumming frantically against his ribcage.  
“She’s fine, your daughter’s fine,” Morra said, bubbling with excitement like a schoolboy “but her genome, Brian, it’s a work of art. You can actually see how her brain is built and how it works - how she has access to it all. You’ll see it too once you’re on NZT, it’s remarkable. Her capacity it’s just, it’s unlocked, and there is no trace of the drug at all. Just the effect, what it did to her DNA. She’s a whole new human, an entirely new species. Brian she is the future!”  
Brain swallowed heavily. That was a good thing, right? He could not tell, his own NZT had worn off hours ago. Morra kept talking.

“This code is the answer to all our research,” he said, “with this, we can make the shots last so much longer, months or years maybe, who knows and we can…make more like her. Brian, I’ve decided to become a father. I’ve finally found the key to everything.”  
Even without NZT Brian could hear the megalomania and an excitement bordering on insanity in Morra’s voice. It made every hair on his body stand up. He saw an army of little NZT-babies springing up like daisies, ready to do their father’s bidding and it dawned on him that this could potentially be very, very dangerous. And because he was tired and afraid, he said so.  
“I think you’ve - we’ve - found the atomic bomb.”  
“Oh yes,” Morra said, he was already seven feet ahead of him, “of course we are. This knowledge is terribly dangerous and no one can ever know.”

Fear. Red hot, and all encompassing and so sudden it made Brian choke. In his mind the consequence of Morra’s sentence was that any minute now, one of his henchmen would burst in the door, kill Rebecca and him and take the baby so no one could ever find out and Morra could experiment on Eliza until her tiny being had revealed all scientific and medical answers and then he would discard her like a guinea pig.  
“Don’t hurt her,” her muttered, pleaded, before he could help himself.  
“What?” Morra said, incredulous, after a pause that suggested he had not drawn the same conclusions that Brian had and was surprised and offended that he did, “After all these years, Brian. I can’t believe you think I could harm an innocent child. Or you for that matter. We’re partners, remember? I don’t want to hurt your daughter, I want to keep her safe.”  
“Yes,” Brian felt utterly powerless and paranoid, unable to get over this deep seated terror that someone would take his baby from him.

“But listen to me, if she is going to develop in the way that her genome suggests, she will be a spectacular early bloomer, like newsworthy-early. We can’t have that. I trust that you know that. For all our safety, and especially for hers, she can not make huge waves. No talent contests, no showing off at school. She can skip a grade or two but that’s it. If anyone finds out about it, especially anybody connected to NZT, they will never stop hunting her.”  
Brian knew this. Instantly and irrevocably. From this moment on, Morra’s words were ingrained in his brain, even without NZT and they would never leave him until the day he died. 

Rebecca was shaken awake softly and woke to see Brian smile. It was an easy one, just the tiniest strain around his eyes, that anyone who did not know him as well as she did would have missed, spoke of things unsaid. But aside from that, he looked like himself again. Funny, good-natured and excitable Brian, her Brian, whom she loved more than life.  
“What?”  
“Eliza’s fine,” he said softly, “but she’s special.”  
Rebecca nodded. She was smart enough to put two and two together and just awake enough to guess the implications. All the same, she was too exhausted and presently too relieved to dwell on those. For now, she was just happy that her baby was healthy. That would be enough for the night. So she smiled, nodded and let her fingers intertwine with Brian’s.

He sighed ever so slightly at the touch and she closed the distance between them, sitting up to meet him. His thin lips were soft as ever and parted easily for hers. This was a proper kiss, of the kind they only shared in private. One of those that made her very core throb and tingle and in this instance hurt, because she was still healing from the very recent birth of her daughter. There was relief in that kiss, and fear, longing, hope, uncertainty, desperation, lust and so much love, it was hard to contain in just one single kiss. They came up for air, took a deep breath and wrapped each other up in arms and legs, as Brian lowered his body down on hers until they turned over and lay side by side.  
“We’ll keep her safe,” Brian promised and kissed her again, his tongue swiping peckishly over her upper lip. Rebecca mumbled an “Uh-huh” into his open mouth and melted into his frame. Beneath all that she felt a fear for her daughter well up that would probably never leave her but there was consolation in the camaraderie with Brian. She was not alone in this fear. She was not alone in this moment. He was steady and solid against her, pressed hard and firmly against her groin and he was real and enduring and he would never leave them. She knew this with the certainty of death and for the moment, that was all the solace she needed. They kissed and caressed each other until they absolutely had to stop and managed to fall asleep together. Ready to begin their life as parents come morning.

Eliza Helen Finch would years later recall the second day of her life in perfect clarity. It began with the image of both her parents bent over her crib, still a little fuzzy and blurry through such fresh eyes, but with faces bursting so clearly with joy, pride, love and wild fury to protect her, that she would bring that image to mind whenever she was afraid, unsure or in doubt of anything at all for years to come.  
Eliza could easily know everything there was to know in the world and it did wonders for her, elevated her to a completely different plane of existence, but none of that could ever hope to match the strength, security and confidence she drew form that single memory.


End file.
